Selfemployment among Italian female graduates

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the gender impact of tertiary education on the probability of entering and remaining in selfemployment. Designmethodologyapproach A data set on labour market flows produced by the Italian National Statistical Office is exploited by interviewing abo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Education & training (London) 2009-09, Vol.51 (7), p.526-540
Main Authors: Rosti, Luisa, Chelli, Francesco
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Gender
Graduates
Italy
Self employed workers
Tertiary education
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the gender impact of tertiary education on the probability of entering and remaining in selfemployment. Designmethodologyapproach A data set on labour market flows produced by the Italian National Statistical Office is exploited by interviewing about 62,000 graduate and nongraduate individuals in transition between five labour market states dependent workers selfemployed workers unemployed persons and nonactive persons. From these data, an average tenyear transition matrix 19932003 is constructed and the flows between labour market conditions by applying Markovian analysis are investigated. Findings The data show that education significantly increases the probability of entering selfemployment for both male and female graduates, but it also significantly increases the transition from selfemployment to dependent employment for female graduates, thereby increasing the percentage of female graduates in paid employment and reducing the percentage of women in entrepreneurial activities. It is argued that the disappointment provoked by the gender wage gap in paid employment may induce some female graduates with lowentrepreneurial ability to setup on their own, but once in selfemployment they have lower survival rates than both men in selfemployment and women in paid employment. Thus, what is observed overall is that education widens the gender gap between selfemployed workers and employees for individuals persisting in the same working condition. Originalityvalue The data are enabled to shift the focus of the relationship between education and entrepreneurship from the probability of being selfemployed to the probability of entering and surviving in this condition.
ISSN:0040-0912
DOI:10.1108/00400910910992736